Japan drug maker Takeda loses US lawsuit

Takeda Pharmaceutical of Japan must pay US$6.5 million in damages to a California man who said Asia's largest drug-maker failed to warn consumers that its Actos diabetes drug could cause cancer, a jury ruled in the first of more than 3,000 lawsuits over the medication to go to trial.

Jurors in state court in Los Angeles found that Osaka-based Takeda did not provide adequate bladder-cancer warnings to Jack Cooper and his doctors about Actos. Cooper, now 79, took the drug for more than four years before being diagnosed with the disease in 2011.

Takeda officials said they had filed motions seeking to have the verdict and the entire case thrown out and that Judge Kenneth Freeman review those requests this week.

Takeda faces more than 3,000 suits alleging Actos caused bladder cancer or other ailments, according to court records. Cooper's suit was among those gathered before Freeman in Los Angeles. Other cases are in state court in Illinois.

More than 1,200 suits have been consolidated before a federal judge in Louisiana for pretrial information exchanges. The first federal case is set for trial in January, according to court filings.

Lawyers for former Actos users contend in court filings that Takeda researchers ignored or played down concerns about the drug's cancer-causing potential before it went on sale in the US in 1999, and misled US regulators about the medicine's risks.